


My Neighbor is Terrifying

by XenophonSpeaks



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: M/M, Night Terrors, Nightmares
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-03
Updated: 2015-06-03
Packaged: 2018-04-02 15:45:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4065544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/XenophonSpeaks/pseuds/XenophonSpeaks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Levi is used to his solitary, peaceful life. When a new tenant moves in next door, the calm of his life is disrupted in a terrifying way-- and Levi can't help but feel oddly grateful.</p>
            </blockquote>





	My Neighbor is Terrifying

**Author's Note:**

> I don't really write ereri. I love the ship, I just don't seem to have inspiration for it very often. Except this one time, when I wrote this out all in one sitting about eight months ago. I was really shy about posting it for some reason so I never did, but after reading some of the amazing ereri week submissions going around, I thought I would post it as a sort of informal contribution to the festivities.

Levi had never been particularly friendly or close to his neighbors, so it came as a surprise to him to discover the tenant directly next to his apartment had apparently moved out. He’d only run into the man a handful of times, and they were both quiet enough to have coexisted peacefully and without a need to speak.

Looking at the small pile of boxes blocking the fairly cramped walkway, Levi had a suspicion that peace and quiet might not last. The fact that a guitar case rested against the wall didn’t do much to assuage his growing feeling of discontent either.

He could hear someone rustling around, no doubt moving boxes into the apartment, and so true to his nature Levi quickly locked his door and made a quiet beeline past the boxes toward the stairs, determinedly not looking into the open door of his new neighbor’s apartment and adjusting the straps on his backpack as he walked. Thankfully, no one tried to stop him, and he safely made his way around the corner and swiftly down the stairs.

Maybe he would get lucky and this new tenant would be as antisocial as he was. He could only hope.

 

A week later and Levi had confirmed two things about the new occupant of the apartment. For one, he was certain it was a guy, because Levi could hear him through the walls. The guy was apparently a musician, and to Levi’s irritation he played the guitar and sang along to it at all hours of the day and night. Levi begrudgingly had to admit that the guy was pretty good, but that didn’t excuse the interruption the music brought to his quiet life.

The other thing, he had gathered, was that the guy was in fact pretty antisocial. Levi only heard the man leave his apartment once or twice the entire week, and he never heard or saw anyone else enter or leave the apartment. This made things both great and terrible—great in that Levi wasn’t forced to interact with someone he had no desire to know, but also terrible because it didn’t give him an opportunity to tell the guy to shut the hell up.

It wasn’t as bad as it probably could have been, though. Levi wasn’t prone to sleeping for long and often did so at odd hours anyway, so it wasn’t like the stranger next door was really disrupting his life much. His only real source of irritation was the lack of silence when Levi was trying to work. As an artist, silence was something Levi craved while he sketched and painted, and the guy was just loud enough to throw off his concentration. Worse, to his chagrin, he often found himself trying to guess what it was the guy was doing next door, or what exactly he was saying when he sang (it was easy enough to hear the tune through the wall, but not so much the lyrics).

In short, it was terribly distracting.

Sometimes he wondered what the guy looked like. Once, he caught someone rounding the corner to head down the stairs and out of the building. That fleeting image of a tall man with broad shoulders and messy brown hair somehow stuck in Levi’s mind, and he found himself imagining (and sometimes sketching) what the face of someone with such a voice might look like. He pictured brown eyes and an easy smile, and placed the guy somewhere around the age of 25 in his mind, maybe younger.

Beyond this, though, Levi’s life was much the same as it had been for the last several years. His artwork was fairly well-known, lauded for its dark subject material and vibrant color. Levi’s work had a very dreamlike quality, with often indistinct shapes and blurs of color. It made sense considering Levi drew his inspiration for those works from his dreams; or rather, nightmares.

The dreams didn’t bother him so much anymore. He would wake up quietly panicked in the dark of his room, images of death and chaos whirring in his mind as the feeling of flying slowly slipped away from him. He would immediately leap from the bed and start sketching, trying to remember what he’d seen before it all went away, attempting to capture every last detail in an effort to divine some meaning in what he dreamt about. None of it ever made sense, and yet it all somehow always felt connected, like each nightmare was a piece of something larger. He just couldn’t figure out _what_.

Drawing it out helped. Painting it all was strangely cathartic and put him at ease. When he’d been younger, the nightmares and the anxiety had felt suffocating, and the fear of more each night had seemed crushing. Now, only the desire to know more about them seemed of any real consequence, the fear having long since ebbed and morphed into a sort of morbid curiosity. Being that his artwork kept him alive and fed, Levi didn’t see any harm in indulging his dreams in an attempt to piece them together.

Something about it felt lonely, though. Even the people who appreciated the subject matter of his artwork didn’t actually understand it the way he understood it. It was like a strange secret he had shared with the world only for it to be misunderstood entirely. He preferred it that way most days.

Just as Levi began to become accustomed to the way things had changed, however, the guy next door scared the hell out of him.

It was somewhere around three or four in the morning. Levi had been in the midst of a nightmare, and upon waking had reached for his sketchbook, as was his habit, when he heard a blood-curdling scream come from the apartment next door.

He shot out of bed, acting on a combination of instinct and left over adrenaline from the dream he’d been having –flying through a huge forest pursuing a giant woman who he had the vague notion had stolen something important, feeling such a rage he could barely breathe he was so full of hate—and he ran for his front door. He immediately went for the door of his neighbor, knocking quickly only to hear the screaming continue. On impulse he tried the doorknob to find it unlocked, allowing him to enter the apartment quickly and cautiously.

All of the lights were off except a lone light coming from what Levi assumed was the bedroom. His heart was hammering, eyes quickly scanning the shadows and corners for intruders, moving steadily toward the light emanating down the hall. He realized he could hear the guy speaking, pleading with someone Levi couldn’t see, apologizing profusely between screams that had Levi’s hair standing on end.

Fists poised to attack –why the hell hadn’t he brought a weapon, shit—Levi entered the room and immediately froze, realizing that there was in fact only one occupant in the room.

The guy was having a nightmare.

“For fucks sake,” Levi hissed, marching across the room full of self-righteous indignation at having not only been woken up, but having also been terrified for the safety of some guy he didn’t even know.

“Oi, wake the fuck up,” he said sternly, shaking the man by the shoulder. Almost immediately the man woke up with a gasp, eyes flying open and pinning Levi with a look full of confusion and mild terror. Levi felt himself gasp in response, mouth falling open slightly because _oh_ , no one warned him about this guy being gorgeous with the most stunning color of eyes –definitively the farthest color from brown Levi could imagine—and no one had warned him said neighbor might be crying, of all things.

After several pregnant seconds of starring at one another, Levi blurted out, “You were having a nightmare.”

The stranger continued to stare at him, now blinking rapidly and wiping his eyes. Levi found himself captivated. Something about this person was causing a rising wave of nostalgia to blossom somewhere in the vicinity of Levi’s chest, and he wasn’t really up for any more emotions tonight than he’d already experienced.

“Uh,” he said eloquently, hands hanging uselessly at his sides.

“Uh,” mirrored the man, now sitting up in bed to give Levi a quizzical look, “That’s… ok, but like, who even are you?”

Oh. Right.

“I live next door, on the other side of this wall,” Levi said, somehow breaking out of his daze long enough to regain some of his previous ire. “You were screaming like you were being stabbed, so I tried the door when no one answered my knocking. It was unlocked,” he mumbled, definitely not defensively.

The man in the bed looked like he was experiencing several conflicting emotions. He looked like he couldn’t decide whether to be embarrassed, pissed off, or amused.

“You look constipated,” Levi hedged, and felt strangely pleased when the guy snorted and threw off what remained of the covers, standing to tower over Levi in a way that was strangely familiar and somehow comforting.

“Thanks,” the guy deadpanned, shaking his head, the hint of a smile playing around his lips. “And, um, sorry. For waking you, I mean. I don’t want to disappoint you, but chances are that’ll happen again. I get, uh… night terrors. Pretty often.” The guy brought up a tanned hand to card through his own hair, eyes glued to the floor.

Levi suddenly felt incredibly awkward, because he understood nightmares, and it wasn’t exactly something a person could control. He would know. He suddenly found himself unsure of what to say, or how to proceed. Particularly since he was standing in a stranger’s bedroom in the middle of the night with no real excuse for being there anymore.

“It’s fine. I have frequent nightmares myself. I’m Levi,” he found himself saying in a rush, which was weird because it was eerily reminiscent of social interaction and Levi just wasn’t a fan of interacting with people. Levi wasn’t really a fan of people in general, truthfully.

The guy looked up, and again Levi was struck with what a weird feeling looking at this guy gave him. “Eren Jaeger,” he said, hand falling before gesturing to the open door of the room. “Do you, uh, do you want some coffee or something?”

“Tea. I don’t drink coffee,” Levi said automatically, realizing belatedly that he’d just agreed to more socializing. Shit.

“Tea is great. I’ll show you what I’ve got and you can pick something out,” Eren said, his face looking beyond relieved to be moving away from the scene of his embarrassment.

Following Eren’s form out of the room, Levi had to physically tear his eyes away from the broad shoulders and low-slung sweatpants trailing in front of him, grateful for the poor lighting to disguise the slight flush of heat he could feel welling in his face.

He had an impending sense of déjà vu, as though he could tell this wouldn’t be the last time he would end up in this apartment.

He wasn’t wrong.

 

Over the next few weeks they developed something of a routine. Eren, as it turned out, was not such a bad companion. He generally knew when to keep to himself, but also had an uncanny appreciation for Levi’s strange sense of humor. He was not only observant of Levi’s quirks, he shared many of them himself; his penchant for keeping odd hours was of particular note in Levi’s opinion, though he suspected that was because Eren actively avoided sleep as opposed to just not being able to get much like Levi himself. He was a few years older than Levi, somewhere around his early to mid-thirties (Levi being thirty himself) and mainly made a living playing music in the city.

He also constantly had nightmares, and Levi quickly developed the habit of waking him up and brewing them both a cup of tea. Eren never locked his doors, a constant source of both irritation and relief.

“You’re going to get robbed,” Levi would say, and Eren would just roll his eyes at him and ask, “Why, are you planning to steal something from me?” Levi would fix him with his best look of scorn, saying, “Not by me, you shit.” Eren would maintain that he wasn’t very concerned about anyone else coming in, and besides, he didn’t really have much of value anyway. Levi couldn’t exactly disagree there, so he’d just shake his head, silently telling himself that at least it made it easier to wake Eren up when he screamed. Just so he could shut him up, of course.

And so it went on for a while, until one night Levi began to notice something really weird about Eren’s nightmares—or perhaps, more accurately, about his own.

His dreams were becoming strangely more vivid. Details that had previously eluded him began to fall into place. Faces became more distinguishable, and what was taking place in the dreams began to take on a distinct sense of clarity.

He also began to notice that each night when he would awaken from a nightmare and begin to paint or sketch, he would hear Eren in the thralls of one of his own night terrors. It began to be strangely predictable; sometimes immediately upon awakening, but always within about half an hour of Levi having woken from his own, he would begin to hear Eren stir through the wall.

Eren never remembered what he dreamt. He only remembered the feeling the dreams left him with. Eren channeled those feelings into his music, Levi discovered. Many of his songs felt very emotionally charged, full of passion, anger, and a pervasive sense of sorrow and loss. Levi found them oddly comforting, and despite his initial intention to ask Eren to shut up so other people could concentrate, he found himself coming to enjoy the music more and more.

One night Levi awoke in a rush, feeling wind-swept and full of excitement. He had been flying, wrapped in the strange machinery he often dreamt of, and beside him had been another. He felt an unaccountable fondness for the boy, and could clearly recall the fierce joy on the boy’s face as he soared beside him.

Leaping from bed, Levi found himself at his desk, hands flitting rapidly across the pages of his sketch book in an effort to capture everything he could remember. It was about fifteen minutes later that he began to hear Eren laughing from beyond the wall. The sound snapped Levi out of his concentration like a slap to the face, and he found himself stumbling back from his work, knocking over his chair in the process as he looked down at his drawing in dawning horror.

Unmistakably, the grinning face of the young man starring up at Levi was that of Eren Jaeger.

 

Levi steadfastly kept Eren out of his apartment. Eren was too dirty, he said, and being strangely accepting of Levi’s neurotic behavior, Eren never pressed to be invited over and merely welcomed Levi into his own home.

Initially that had been the truth, but now Levi was apprehensive of Eren viewing anything he created. Some part of Levi was strangely concerned it would hurt Eren, and he couldn’t quite figure out why.

It wasn’t too long before Eren began inviting Levi over in a legitimate sense, one that didn’t involve nightmares as a pretext for being in one another’s company. Levi hated human contact and yet found himself occasionally stopping on his way home from getting takeout somewhere, knocking on Eren’s door with the excuse that he’d just bought too much and would Eren like some, to which the answer was always of course, of course, come on in and I’ll put on some tea.

He would catch Eren eyeing him sometimes, and only really noticed because it was the same way he looked at Eren when he thought Eren wasn’t paying attention (which was often enough; Eren was one of the most spacey people Levi had ever encountered). They sometimes would end up watching a movie, Eren often nodding off on the sofa beside him, and during those times Levi had to force himself to keep his hands on his own end of the couch. The urge to take care of Eren was powerful, but more unsettling was the urge to have Eren care for him in return.

Sometimes Levi would say or do something that would get Eren to smile, and Levi would be struck by the inexplicable thought that Eren used to smile a lot more.

Those smiles became easier with time. Eren’s mood slowly seemed to be improving, and Levi found himself feeling less lonely than before and enjoying company for perhaps the first time ever. Companionship –or something more-- was never something Levi had really seriously considered, and yet he was silently very grateful Eren had decided to move in next door, despite adamant protests to the contrary.

He also began to feel vaguely guilty about what he had drawn. Levi had never fully believed his nightmares were just normal dreams, but he was slowly becoming convinced Eren’s weren’t either, and he wasn’t sure what to make of that. The more he woke Eren up, the more often he found himself hearing what Eren was dreaming about, and much of it sounded eerily reminiscent of his own dreams. He didn’t want to think about what that meant.

 

Levi woke up feeling empty. His most recent nightmare wasn’t a new one; one where he died, having fought a battle and finally meeting his end in a grove to the screams of his companions, the stench of blood and steam thick in the air. He had dreamt it several times before, and it always left him feeling hollow.

Not long after, as a sense of normality began to return to his body, he sat on the edge of his bed and waited, not at all surprised when he heard Eren begin to cry out.

He made his way next door, shuffling toward Eren’s room with the light on once again –always on, Eren seemed to be unable to sleep at all in the dark— only to stop dead in the doorway.

Eren was screaming. That wasn’t unusual, but what he was screaming made Levi feel as though the floor had dropped out from beneath him.

“Captain! CAPTAIN! NO!” Over and over. Levi felt himself drop heavily to the floor beside Eren’s bed, not cognizant of having moved closer. Eren’s screams were too familiar, the sound seeming to echo from his own dream. This sound was in no way new. These screams were precisely what he’d heard as he dreamt his own death time and time again.

Levi felt sick and yet somehow couldn’t move, because all at once he realized that not only did he and Eren seem to have nightmares around the same time, they also seemed to be sharing the same subject matter. Levi didn’t want to think about what that meant, _he_ _didn’t want to think about it_ , he had to get out of Eren’s room, needed to get away.

Propelled by fear, Levi managed to stumble back from Eren’s bed, unable to look away from the tears streaming out of his closed eyes. He ran into Eren’s desk hard as he backpedaled out of the room, knocking several things over with a loud crash in the process.

He heard Eren start awake at the noise but he continued to stumble through the apartment and back towards his own, hearing Eren call out to him as if from a distance. He fumbled with the door, quickly making his way into his own room and turning on every light as he went because everything was suddenly too dark and it felt like anything could be hiding in the shadows.

In his haste, he forgot to lock his own front door, and at first didn’t realize Eren had followed him. He heard the door quietly click shut from the other room, his hands seizing into fists as he felt his panic spike. The fear of what might happen next rooted him to the floor, and Levi held his breath, waiting and not knowing what for.

“Levi,” he heard Eren quietly call, his bare footsteps padding softly across the wood flooring of the apartment. Levi knew he was moving in the direction of his artwork, strewn all about the living room in various states of completion.

“Levi,” he heard Eren call again, louder this time yet somehow quietly desperate. Levi felt his heart constrict, and willed himself to move back toward the living room.

Eren was standing before several canvases, but he could tell one in particular had caught his attention. It was a painting based off the drawing Levi had made weeks ago now, the one that bore a striking resemblance to Eren. He turned to Levi, looking bewildered.

“Why,” he started, but seemed unable to find the right words, swallowing before turning to face Levi fully, gesturing to the paintings lining the wall. “Why do you have these?”

“My nightmares,” Levi gestured, pleading internally for his voice to be steady. “You write songs about yours. I paint mine.”

“No. No, this,” Eren gestured somewhat wildly, “You can’t paint this.”

Irritation struck Levi suddenly, and he clung fiercely to that feeling, finding stability in anger. Anger was a feeling Levi was well acquainted with. “And why the fuck not?”

Eren’s face faltered, and Levi heard his voice shake as he quietly said, “Because they’re _my_ dreams.”

“You don’t remember your dreams,” Levi pressed, irritated at the note of desperation he heard in his own voice. “You’ve told me that yourself plenty of times.”

“And I didn’t! Not well, and not until… until recently,” he mumbled, bringing a hand to his face and rubbing his forehead.

Sighing, Levi walked over to sit heavily on his couch. He patted the seat beside him resignedly, distantly pleased when Eren plopped down beside him.

They both sat in silence for some time, until the quiet tension faded into something comfortable and almost normal. They always seemed to have a calming effect on one another.

“Is it real?” Eren finally asked, eyes still glued to the paintings across the room.

“I don’t know. I never thought so until I met you,” Levi quietly confessed. “You say you’ve started to remember your dreams better recently. I could say the same about mine, though I’ve always remembered them better than what you’ve claimed to.”

“I recognized you. Sort of,” Eren blurted, face reddening. “The first time you came into my apartment and woke me up. I was so confused because I felt like I knew who you were. And ever since then, I’ve started remembering things when I wake up. Mostly weird little things, like names or places. Sometimes I remember people now.”

Eren gestured to a painting of a figure that was unmistakably female. A red scarf was wrapped around her neck, her posture fiercely protective of a figure in the background.

“I know her. Sort of. It’s all messy, like trying to see through a fog,” he said, and Levi nodded, because that was often how he’d felt, too. “She was always trying to protect me. I feel like I knew her really well, like… I don’t know. Family, or something. Her name was—“

“Mikasa Ackerman,” Levi interrupted, starring at the painting and feeling a deep sense of regret but not knowing why. He crossed his arms to himself, feeling uncomfortable. “She wasn’t a fan of me.”

Levi turned to look at Eren and nearly laughed at Eren’s look of absolute disbelief. Something slowly began to dawn over Eren’s features, a realization of some sort, and Levi found himself growing increasingly more uncomfortable by the second.

“You,” Eren started, leaning closer across the couch. Levi felt his skin heat but refused to move. “ _I know you._ You’re the Captain. My Captain.”

Levi’s heart did something funny in his chest at the phrase _my captain_ but he managed to keep a straight face. He shrugged noncommittally, looking away.

As a result he didn’t realize Eren had encapsulated him in a hug until it was already too late for him to move. His eyes went wide as he felt Eren shake around him, realizing after a moment that Eren was crying. Belatedly, he wrapped his arms around Eren as best he could.

“I _just_ dreamed about you. I saw you _die._ ”

“I kind of figured that out, you shit. I sort of heard you and possibly… panicked. Slightly.”

He felt Eren laugh after a moment, squeezing him tighter. Levi couldn’t help letting go of a wry smile, at least content in the fact that Eren couldn’t see it, buried in his shoulder as he was.

Eren suddenly pulled back, looking him dead in the face. “Holy shit, wait. You’re alive.”

Levi felt like it was his turn to be bewildered. “Um. Yes. I hope that isn’t a problem.”

“Oh my god, you complete asshole, stop being sarcastic for one minute,” Eren laughed, seeming unable to contain his smile now. Levi felt content at how genuine it looked. “This is really weird. I’m older than you. I remember you being way older before.”

Levi managed a weak glare. He didn’t like how smug that information made Eren look. “I wasn’t _that_ old. And neither are you, now.”

“Old enough,” Eren insisted, his arms around Levi’s shoulders now. Levi suddenly realized just how close the two of them were, and how comfortable that seemed. He felt strangely conflicted, like he should probably stop where he had a feeling this might go, but he couldn’t come up with a decent reason as to why.

Plus he figured they’d probably earned it if everything they were dreaming about was in fact something that had actually happened.

That didn’t stop his face from heating up when Eren pulled him close enough to feel his breath fan across his face.

“Hey, Levi,” Eren started, Levi’s level of embarrassment hitting an all-time high, “there was something I’ve been meaning to tell you and now I really feel like I have to.”

“No.”

“What?!”

“No. No more talking.”

“… Are you—are you blushing right now? Are you seriously _shy_? Oh my god. I can’t believe this, Captain Levi is--”

“Eren Jaeger, if you continue that sentence I swear to god—“

And Eren didn’t. He kissed him soundly on the mouth instead.

**Author's Note:**

> Want to be tumblr buddies? Come and say hello. xenophonspeaks.tumblr.com


End file.
